Sport/physical exercise and health: what’s new?

The London Olympic Games kick off on July 27th. With around 100 days to go, Inserm wishes to invite you to look into the research that has been done in the fields of sport and health.

Various research programs over the last few years have shown the benefits of physical exercise on our health, in preventing obesity or in improving the health of patients suffering from chronic, cardiovascular or respiratory diseases in particular.

So what about high-level sports? These also seem to contribute to good health. Are high-level sport and physical exercise both determining factors for our health?

Several research teams in France specializing in epidemiology, sports medicine, physiology and physics are investigating the interactions between sport, physical exercise and health.

Below you will find contacts and detailed information about some of the Inserm teams involved in the fields below, among others:

• The impact of performance on life expectancy and mortality

• The part played by high-level athletes as models for studying respiratory diseases

• The rules of training for competitive sports transposed to physical exercise (notions of gradual build-up, development of different sporting energy systems, regularity, variations in exercises, motricity, assessment, etc.)